Archive for December 20th, 2018

UNITED NATIONS, 19 December 2018 (IPS) – The UN’s major donors – led by the United States – have long been accused of influence-peddling and misusing their financial clout not only to grab some of the high ranking jobs in the world body but also threaten funding cuts to push their own domestic agendas.

The Trump administration’s plan to reduce its 22% assessed contributions to the world body –- mandatory payments to the UN’s regular budget– has helped resurrect a 1985 suggestion by the late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme who proposed a new system of financing the UN.

The Palme proposal did not renounce the existing “capacity to pay” formula, but suggested there should be a cap of 10 percent maximum for any one country.

18 December 2018 (UN Environment)* – Sri Hartiwi, a rubber tapper in Indonesia’s Jambi Province on the island of Sumatra, has a demanding routine. Her day starts at 3.30 a.m. when she cooks for the family and goes off to work in a plantation till 1.00 p.m. She gets a holiday on Sundays.

Her family—her husband, a cleaner in a private company, and two children—don’t own any land, making the income earned from rubber tapping critical for the household’s daily needs.

The first legislative proposal of evangelical groups in Guatemala would legalise homophobia, threaten women who have miscarriages with jail terms, and allow the criminal prosecution of abortion rights campaigners.

Migrants and refugees are being subjected to “unimaginable horrors” from the moment they enter Libya, throughout their stay in the country and – if they make it that far – during their attempts to cross the Mediterranean, according to a report released on 20 December 2018 by the United Nations political mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and the UN human rights office (OHCHR).

UNICEF/UN052822/Romenzi | A migrant sits in a patch of light entering through one of only two windows as he tries to warm himself up at a detention centre, located in Libya, 1 February 2017. At the time of UNICEF’s visit, 160 men were being detained there.

It is by now widely recognised that effectively tackling forced labour in the global economy means addressing its ‘root causes’. Policymakers, business leaders and civil society organisations all routinely call for interventions that do so.[1, 2]Yet what exactly are these root causes? And how do they operate?

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has confirmed the existence of at least two tunnels crossing the “Blue Line” – the border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel – but they “do not appear thus far” to have exit points leading to the surface on Israeli territory, the United Nations top peacekeeping official on 19 December 2018 told the Security Council.

Rights violations have continued unabated and unaddressed in Ukraine and people are still dying amid ongoing conflict between Government forces and armed separatists in the east of the country, a top UN rights official on 19 December 2018 said.

IOM/Konstantin Skomorokh | An elderly woman in village Krymskoe, heavily affected by the armed conflict, receives financial assistance from IOM.

.

Addressing Member States at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kate Gilmore, warned that in addition to the loss of life, fighting had caused communities to “fracture”, undermining the prospects for a sustainable peace.

Like this:

West and Central Africa faces “disruptive and destabilising” new trends regarding drug trafficking, drug use and other crimes, according to Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), who briefed the UN Security Council on 19 December 2018.

UNMIL Photo/Christopher Herwig | Abandoned buildings at the Barclay training center in downtown Monrovia, a notorious meeting point for drug dealers and users. Here, a suspect is identified and searched for drugs and weapons. (2008)

“UNODC is registering new alarming trends on drug trafficking in West and Central Africa with disruptive and destabilizing effects on governance, security, economic growth, and public health,” said Mr. Fedotov, who briefed via VTC.